


Opposites Attract

by Kireii-yume (kireii_yume)



Series: Kireii-Yume Does Cliche'd Fics! [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Awkward Flirting, M/M, keith and lance are awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 22:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9205427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kireii_yume/pseuds/Kireii-yume
Summary: A tattoo artist with a flower allergy falls for a florist with a deathly fear of needles, but they're both willing to endure just about anything for a crush.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm dabbling in cliche and arguably overdone fic things and trying to put my own spin on them, so here's the flower shop and tattoo parlor AU!

“Lance, go tell them to move,” Katie said, gesturing at the moving truck parked right in the middle of the street. People were moving boxes across the street into the vacant shop, which wouldn’t normally be a problem, but traffic was piling up behind the truck and they’d already had three people come into their flower shop and complain. 

“What? Why me?” Lance asked. “I’m busy!” he objected, wildly gesturing at the bouquet of flowers he was tying up with a massive ribbon. 

“Because Hunk’s too sweet to actually tell them to go away and I don’t want to.” With a roll of the eyes, Lance finished tying up the bow and shoved the order sheet toward Katie. 

“Fine, but you owe me one.” He marched out of the door, ignoring the cheerful tinkling of the store door’s bell as he made his way to the truck. “Hey, you’re blocking the road!” he called over to the nearest person. But when that person turned around, he stopped straight in his tracks. 

“We’re almost done,” he said tiredly. The person had perfect fair skin, striking purple eyes, and ebony hair elegantly sculpted to look messy. He was wearing black skinny jeans and a tight black shirt, one that showed his muscles and the beautiful, elegant array of tattoos on his arms. His nose was adorned with a piercing, as was his right ear. Most prominent of all was a red lion tattoo, crouching on his left bicep. But most of all, Lance noticed that his guy was incredibly handsome, and his heart stuttered just a bit. “Hey, it’d go quicker if you helped us out.”

“Oh sure!” Lance said without thinking, grabbing the last heavy box. “Can I, um, get your name?” 

“Keith,” the guy said. “Hey, you can head out,” Keith told the driver. “We have all the boxes.”

“I’m Lance. I work at the shop across the street. What are you guys setting up there?”

“It’s going to be a tattoo parlor, actually.” Lance tried to mask his discomfort. He’d grown up in a fairly sheltered suburban area, where children were taught to avoid massive, tattooed guys like the ones helping Keith unload, and on top of that he hated the idea of even getting a tattoo. But Keith seemed nice and normal enough, and on top of that Lance was rapidly developing a crush on him. “We’re moving locations from across town. It’s pretty small, just me, my boss Shiro, and a couple others.”

“So’s my shop, my friend Hunk and I own it and our friend Katie’s helping out to put herself through college.” 

“That’s awesome. I’ll have to come see you guys sometime,” Keith said with a smile, and Lance was absolutely convinced he’d go into cardiac arrest at the sheer sight of it.

“Y…yeah, definitely!” Lance’s smile grew, getting giddier and giddier by the second. “Um, I have to get back to the shop, but you should stop by once you get everything all set up.” 

“Will do,” Keith replied with a grin as Lance turned around and left, coming into the shop only to find Katie and Hunk grinning at him.

“What?” Lance asked, fully aware that he was blushing more and more by the second. 

“Took you a little while to get back,” Hunk told him, winking. 

“And that guy you were talking to was pretty cute!” Katie told him in a singsong voice. 

“How far are you on the bouquets?” Lance asked, moving behind the counter and not meeting anyone’s eyes. 

“You can’t just change the subject like that,” Hunk objected. “Did you ask him out?”

“No!” 

“Is he cute?”

“He’s smoking hot but I think you should get back to work. I’m half the boss here!” Lance said half jokingly, moving back to the order form with a wink that was supposed to be nonchalant. But Hunk and Katie both grinned at each other, noting his ever-growing blush and the way he kept looking out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Keith.

\---  
_One week later_

Keith took a deep breath, looking around the shop on his first full day of work. Nothing was terribly busy; there was no excuse to not take up Lance’s offer. “Hey Shiro, I’m taking my break,” he called. 

“Be back in fifteen minutes, I think we’ll have more walk-ins soon,” Shiro called back. 

“Will do.” As Keith walked out of the door, he kept getting distracted by thoughts of Lance, his deep blue eyes and his perfect tan, just how perfect he looked and how cute he was. So when he walked into the shop he didn’t realize how bad of an idea it really was.

Keith had learned he was allergic to flowers a couple of years ago, when he’d tried to buy a bouquet for his now ex-girlfriend, a sweet gesture that hadn’t ended well. Luckily it didn’t come up terribly often anymore, so he didn’t take anything particularly powerful for it. He could supplement with other medications, but he didn’t think about it. Besides, Benadryl, the only one he could really take on top of his other allergy pills, made him incredibly drowsy. And he may or may not have been too distracted by Lance to really think about what his shop sold. But when he walked in the shop and immediately felt that incredibly uncomfortable sensation of his eyes and nose itching like crazy, he realized that he’d made a mistake. The symptoms were manageable, albeit annoying, but the real concern was looking like a teary-eyed, snotty mess in front of what may have been the cutest guy he’d ever seen. On top of that, the shop was full of flowers, arrangements stacked on shelves that reached all the way to the ceiling. He mentally cut his fifteen minutes down to ten or even five, knowing that he’d need a bit of time to try and look somewhat decent before his shift began again. A sneeze snuck up on him, but luckily the sound of the bell over the door covered it up. 

“Hey, Keith!” Lance called from his position at the desk, arranging flowers in a vase. He looked incredible—his jeans and button-down shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, looked amazing on him, and the added touch of the green apron-type garb he wore only accentuated it. It took Keith’s breath away. 

“Hey,” Keith said, smiling and using all of his self-control to not rub at his reddening eyes as he walked up to the desk.

“I would have popped over once I saw your shop was open the other day but Hunk just called in sick a couple of days ago and Katie has finals, so I’ve had to hold down the fort here.” Lance looked up from his work at Keith, and grinned until he looked into his eyes. “You okay, dude?” 

“Yeah, fine,” he assured, sniffling discreetly (he hoped). “It’s been crazy over on my end too, so no worries.” 

“Just got this huge order in, and I’ve gotta deal with about a million vases. Katie and Hunk are way better at this stuff but I don’t know, I think it looks okay.” 

“It looks amazing,” Keith told him, leaning forward a bit to examine the arrangement. It looked incredibly elegant, the larger center roses framed by an assortment of smaller white flowers so it looked like a heart. 

“Thanks!” Lance grinned, a slight blush rising to his cheeks. Keith would have taken a couple of moments to admire him, but the flowers necessitated that he muffle a couple sneezes into the crook of his arm. He’d hoped that he was quiet enough where Lance wouldn’t notice, because Lance worrying about him was possibly the most embarrassing thing he could think of. No such luck. “Gesundheit.” Luckily Lance seemed distracted enough with snipping thorns off more roses where he didn’t notice a correlation.

“Thanks.” After another couple of sniffles and the itch only getting worse, Keith decided that he’d better cut the encounter short and return when he was a bit more prepared. “I should head back over to the tattoo parlor, we’re getting a few appointments soon.” 

“OK, maybe I’ll pop over there when things quiet down. See you!” Keith knew he should probably return the sentiment, but he was going to start sneezing again and would rather not do it in front of Lance. He sneezed once while he headed out the door, and sneezed a couple more times before crossing the street. As he went into the tattoo parlor and ducked into the back, he cursed himself internally for not taking more precautions. 

“What happened?” Shiro asked incredulously as a sneeze practically bent Keith in half. He yanked out his nose ring frantically, which at this point was only making everything worse, and tried to come up with a suitable lie that didn’t show the depth of his infatuation. “Where were you?”

“Flower shop across the street,” Keith muttered before sneezing again, giving up on being evasive. Shiro raised an eyebrow as he tossed a box of Kleenex over to him. Exhausted, Keith grabbed a couple, desperately trying to get his nose to stop itching. 

“Um, is this the same guy who had to sit in the back for like half an hour after a date brought him flowers at work? Why were you over there?” Realization dawned. “Ohhh, is it that cute guy?” 

“Yeah, of course he works in a flower shop.” Scrubbing at his eyes, Keith sat back in a chair, trying to forget about the incident that Shiro had brought up. A few months after the girlfriend broke up with him, a prospective boyfriend tried to come in to his work and woo him with flowers. Not only had he had a massive allergy attack but Shiro had also given him Benadryl and subsequently had to babysit loopy Keith for the rest of the shift. 

“Need to take anything?” Shiro asked.

“Probably but I’m not dealing with trying to do tattoo art…while… _heh-choo!_ …while I’m trying not to fall asleep.” Keith took a look in the mirror. He did, in fact, look like death warmed over, with his red, teary eyes, his nose so red that he could pass for Rudolph, and his blotchy cheeks. 

“I’ll take the next appointment so you have a bit of time to compose yourself,” Shiro told him, wincing sympathetically. 

“Thanks,” Keith replied, his voice thick with congestion. “I’ll be out soon.” He rubbed at his nose, looking back on the encounter. Lance was adorable. No denying it. And god, the way he’d smiled when Keith had complimented him…even for the couple of minutes he was there it was incredible. Well worth the aftereffects.

\-----  
_Two days later_

Lance stared across the road to the tattoo parlor, hoping to catch a glimpse of Keith through the window. Something had seemed off with him the other day and Lance was hoping everything was alright. “You’ve been looking over there all day dude!” Hunk told him. “Just go over, I’ve got this.”

“Really?”

“You’re not getting anything done anyway.” After shooting a quick glare at Hunk, Lance walked around the counter to the door.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Go get some!” Trying his utmost to stop blushing, Lance walked across the street and opened the door to the tattoo parlor.

Immediately Lance felt out of his element. He was standing there in a button-down and a flower shop apron amidst people clad in leather, with more tattoo visible than skin. Everyone had at least one piercing, and the man that Keith was working on was at least twice Lance’s size. “Hey!” Keith called out. “Go ahead and pull up a chair, we can talk while I work.” Shoving aside the discomfort, Lance sat down next to Keith. At first he was worried about being rude in front of Keith’s customer, but then he noticed the large earbuds that the man was sporting; he wouldn’t be able to hear any of Keith’s conversation if it happened. 

“How’re you doing?” Lance fought back a wave of nausea as he saw the massive array of needles on the table next to Keith. He’d always had an aversion to needles—Hunk, his childhood friend, had been around to see him faint while getting every single injection he needed as a child, and when he decided to donate blood once he ended up vomiting on a poor nurse. Needless to say, Lance would rather not watch the needles going into Keith’s customer, but he figured he could stick it out as long as he just watched Keith’s face. 

“Good, almost done with my last scheduled appointment today,” he said, gesturing at the tattoo. Luckily for Lance, there were no needles at the moment—in fact, the tattoo of a flaming skull on the man’s bicep looked just about done. Though it was by no means Lance’s cup of tea, it was pretty impressive, the way Keith had managed to work in shadows and color shifting. “I just need to finish the outline here, it should take just a couple seconds.” Before Lance could look away, he saw the needle being prepped, and at that point he couldn’t really look away. Keith turned on the thing the needles was attached to, and it started buzzing.

“Sounds good, you can get off early today. You’re really talented.” Dizziness started to overtake Lance, and the nausea rose up even more powerfully. He tried his best to ignore it, because he was absolutely not going to faint or puke in front of Keith. Not going to happen. Especially because he already felt incredibly out of place here and didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself.

“Thank you,” Keith said, and Lance saw his cheeks go pink. Keith didn’t seem like the blushing type, but lo and behold, here was a blush. But before Lance could fully focus on it, he saw the needle go in out of the corner of his eye.

His hearing started to go weird, and blackness started to intrude on the edges of his vision. He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm himself as Keith finished up, but it was very quickly getting worse. Lance was about to stand and try and leave the store to breathe for a second, but quickly he realized that all that would do is make him pass out more quickly. Keith was talking but Lance couldn’t really hear. The guy started to walk away, and Lance felt a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay? Lance!” was the last thing he heard before he slumped forward, straight into Keith’s lap.

 

When he woke up a few minutes later he was lying on the waiting room sofa, with Keith sitting right next to him, watching. “Are you okay? Oh my god…do you need anything?” 

“No, no, I’m okay,” Lance murmured, fighting back the massive wave of embarrassment. “Everything’s fine, this just happens…” 

“When?!” Keith asked incredulously. 

“I um…I kind of…don’t like needles.” At that, everything made sense, and Keith turned bright red, looking horrified.

“You should’ve told me, we could have waited to talk until I was done! I’m so sorry!”

“No, no, you’re fine.” Gingerly, Lance started to stand. “You really couldn’t have known.” 

“You sure you’re going to be okay? I could walk you back if you give me a minute to…get everything wrapped up.”

“No, I’m good. Dude, this happens plenty, I’m fine. You’ll have to let me know when you don’t have appointments so I can come see you again,” Lance offered. Keith nodded.

“Okay. You’re sure you’re fine?” 

“Yeah. But I’ll see you soon.” They smiled at each other and Lance walked out the door, still a bit shaky but not wanting to look even more like a wimp in front of Keith. He had some masculinity to uphold. When he opened the door Hunk almost accosted him.

“How’d it go?” he demanded. Lance sighed.

“Uh, could’ve gone better. Nope, no more details. What orders do we have in?” 

“Hey, couldn’t have been that bad. Katie puked in her purse on her first date,” Hunk grinned.

“I did not!” Katie objected from the back room. Hunk gave her a skeptical look. “Okay, okay, but it wasn’t my fault I got food poisoning the night before!” 

“So you’re fine. If Katie can move on from that, you can move on from this.”

“Comforting.” But despite his pessimism, he still felt like there was a chance. He’d just have to see if Keith came by again.  
\----  
_The next day_

Keith braced himself, staring across the street and relishing his last few breaths of clean, flower-less air. “Remind me again why you’re going back there without Benadryl?” Shiro asked from a few feet away. 

“It makes me loopy, you know that.”

“So you’d rather be constantly sneezing than a little drowsy.”

“Last time I took Benadryl…you know what happened!” Shiro chuckled. 

“Point taken. Well, good luck,” he told Keith.

“Thanks,” Keith replied, leaving the store and crossing the street. He needed to go apologize to Lance for the day before, and after doing that he was going to ask him out. Couldn’t be that hard. Then they could meet somewhere where Keith could breathe and where Lance wouldn’t have to be anxious. It wouldn’t be so hard. 

Luckily this time Keith expected the reaction that occurred the minute he entered the shop, and Lance was at the counter, not working with flowers. His face lit up when Keith entered. “Hey! What’s up?” 

“I just wanted to come over and apologize again,” Keith said, blinking a couple of times to try and clear the irritation out of his eyes. 

“Oh, you really don’t need to, I’m fine!” Lance reassured, smiling at Keith. After a quick sneeze, Keith returned the smile. “Gesundheit, you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” A smile was luckily enough to reassure Lance, even though it was interrupted in mere seconds by another sneeze. “I was going to ask…”

“Yeah?” Keith was about to elaborate for Lance, but they were interrupted by a voice from the back room.

“Lance! We got the shipment in, can you bring a box up front?” 

“Sure Hunk!” Lance called back. “Sorry, I have to go, I’ll be right back.” He went into the back, and Keith rubbed at his nose. This was worse than last time…especially since it took Lance a good five minutes to drag the box out. By the time he’d come back, Keith was awaiting the sweet embrace of death. On the upside, his nose wasn’t running, but on the downside, he’d lost the ability to breathe through it. His eyes burned and he couldn’t go a solid thirty seconds without a sneeze, which was now making Lance look at him with concern as he started to unload the box. “You sure you’re okay, dude?”

“Really, I’m…one sec... _heh-choo!_ …fine.” Disguising the congestion in his voice was incredibly hard, but it was happening, and if he managed to ask soon, it would be over. “So, are you… _heh-choo!_ …are you free tonight?” Keith celebrated internally for managing to get the question out, but almost recoiled in horror when Lance produced a few large bunches of flowers from the box and laid them across the counter. He turned away to sneeze again, but he knew that was the first of many to come.

“I think so. Wow, these are way nicer than I thought they’d be,” Lance said to himself, holding up a bouquet for Keith’s inspection. The flowers were uncomfortably close to Keith, and all he wanted was to get out, but he had yet to get an answer. He politely nodded, if only so Lance would move those away. “Why, what were you thinking?” But before Keith could answer, he was sneezing, more and more now that the flowers were not five inches away from his nose. He tried to stop for a second but it wasn’t working, the sneezes just came one after the other after the other. Faintly he could hear Lance swear under his breath, and he felt a gentle arm around his shoulders, pushing him in what he hoped was the direction of the door. But his eyes were watering too badly for him to really see, so he simply followed. In a minute he heard the bell and then felt the gentle breeze of outside. Within a few seconds, the sneezing fit had dulled to something manageable. 

“Oh god, I’m so sorry!” At this point Keith was bright red, and the attentive gaze of Lance didn’t help. Luckily, once Keith’s breathing returned to normal, Lance’s concerned gaze softened. “I am so sorry…”

“So, no bouquet of flowers on our date?” Lance joked with a wink. 

“Wh…what?” 

“You were going to ask me out, right? Because a date would be awesome.” 

“Really? I mean, yeah, of course! Could I have your number? So I can text details?” Keith held out his phone, and Lance inputted his number into the contacts. Before he took the phone back, Keith sneezed again. “Ugh, sorry.” Lance rolled his eyes.

“Dude, don’t apologize. You asked me out.” And the beaming smile on Lance’s face made Keith light up. “So I’ll see you then?”

“Yeah.” They both smiled at each other and headed to their own shops, where both of them spent the rest of their shifts smiling at nothing and looking across the way to see if they could catch the other’s eye.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my [tumblr](http://kireii-yume.tumblr.com) to see what I post and request things!


End file.
